by David Yoon
Titanfist 3 is one long bro-yell of a movie, and I can so clearly picture Wu fist-pumping at the screen while Joy buries herself in her seat that I have to stifle a laugh.
“Mr. Frank, are you seriously looking at a phone in our sanctuary of learning?” says Mr. Berry Soft.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, and put it away. I give Brit a quick grin and her nose crinkles happily: What are you up to? A wave passes through me. A wave of something. Mischief? Thrill? Daring?
Mr. Soft holds his gaze, not mad or anything, just patiently waiting. “Anything you’d like to share?”
I do want to share. I want to stand on my desk and declare, I have my first real date with Brit to the class. But I just offer a contrite smile and shake my head no.
“Next week our SAT boot camp starts,” says Mr. Soft, “so let your brains rest. No homework this weekend.”
“Aw,” says Q with genuine disappointment.
“I am blessed to have you as a student, Mr. Q,” says Mr. Soft. “Pound sign blessed.”
* * *
• • •
Later, I gather things from my locker for the weekend. I look at my warped reflection in my cheap stick-on mirror. I’ve never thought of myself as good-looking. But Brit must think so. Wouldn’t that make me officially good-looking? I slam the locker door shut to reveal Q’s face inches from mine.
“Jesus,” I say. “You scared the poop out of my butthole.”
“We’re hitting the Blood Keep bonus level tomorrow,” says Q. “Me, Olmo, you, and the Patel brothers on webcam. Bring your headset, because it’s us versus a friggin’ demigod.”
“Q, Q, Q,” I say. “Listen.”
Q’s face falls. “No.”
“I have a date.”
“Urghhh,” says Q.
“Pull yourself together, old chap,” I say in my best posh lockjaw.
Q closes his eyes. “Deep breath, soft focus.” He opens them again. “Right, then. My boy Frank, I am quite delighted for you. And this date is . . . ?”
“Dinner and that Old New Loves movie.”
“Brilliant.”
Q eyes me, like my face suddenly got different. Maybe it has.
“And your parents are cool with her?” he says.
I inhale sharply and yank my backpack straps. “Mhm,” is all I say. I don’t want to tell him just yet about my covert dating strategy, which probably seems ludicrous if you look at it up close. But ludicrous times, they say, call for ludicrous measures.
“Wow, that was easy,” says Q. “How did things turn around with them? Did something good happen with Hanna?”
“Why?”
“Huh?”
We both stare at each other for a moment, confused. My phone buzzes.
“That’s her, gotta run,” I say.
By her, I mean Joy, saying, Pick me up in 30. But Q doesn’t need to know that right now.
“I’ll just be at the Blood Keep, then,” says Q.
* * *
• • •
I drive home in my unenthusiastic Consta as fast as I can and pound up the stairs to my room to get ready. I have just enough time for a five-minute shower, hair gel touch-up, and a fresh shirt: my favorite one with the dog sipping tea in hell saying This is fine.
I’m tipping my head back to clip my nose hairs in the mirror when a voice sings softly at me.
“Where you going tonight?”
It’s Mom, leaning against the doorjamb.
“Dinner,” I say. “Then a movie.”
“Good, good,” says Mom with obvious relish. “What movie?” she asks, as if the film choice will augur my future.
“It’s called Old New Loves.”
“What it’s about?”
“Mommy, you don’t bothering Frank, okay?” calls Dad from the other room. “He must be get ready.”
“Sound like love story,” says Mom. “Joy like it, I bet. Girl like love story.”
“Mom,” I say. “I gotta go.”
Dad appears in the doorway next to Mom, holding keys. “You take my car.”
I look at him. I’ve never driven Dad’s car before. He holds his keys out like a chef would a big pinch of salt.
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Mmm,” says Dad.
Mom-n-Dad stand all smiles in the doorway, blocking me.
“Can I . . . ?” I say.
Finally they clear the way. “Okay, go,” says Mom.
I hammer downstairs and jump into Dad’s QL5, and by the time I’m backing out, Mom-n-Dad are already in position to wave me off like I’m going out to sea.
* * *
• • •
I get to the Songs’ insane beach cliff house and text Joy from the car.
Standing by
Roger, says Joy.
Joy comes exploding from the giant designer cherry front door, and as she whirls once to wave bye to her parents, I see her hair flash green in the blue light of dusk. She slams into the car.
“My dad used to have one of these,” says Joy, glancing around at the faded interior. She smells like rose, like an actual rose.
My heart is pounding. I can tell from a single pulsing sinew in her neck that hers is, too.
“Let’s do this,” I say with a grin.
As we drive away, I can see Joy’s parents waving and waving until we are out of sight.
“Do you know what my parents actually said just now?” says Joy.
“What?” I say, taking a turn a little too fast. The thrill of the caper is slowly ebbing to make way for another thrill waiting in the wings: Brit and I sitting close, dreaming together of love on a big screen.
“They said, ‘Don’t wake us up when you get home.’ Can you believe that? They basically just said I could stay out as late as I want.”
I nod and nod at her in happy disbelief. “My dad gave me his friggin’ car.”
“I bet we could go out every single night and they wouldn’t care,” says Joy with wonder.
“Dude,” I say, and high-five her.
“Whoa whoa whoa,” says Joy. “Got a visual on the package.”
We’re approaching her movie theater. In the distance stands Wu, the aforementioned package, before a Titanfist 3 poster, trying to imitate the crouched fighting stance of the twenty-story-tall robot depicted there. But he’s not satisfied with his pose, so he shakes it off and tries again.
“Go, go,” I say.
Joy releases her seat belt. “So don’t worry about getting me home, okay? Wu’ll give me a ride. He’ll insist.”
I imagine Wu pulling up to Joy’s doorstep, to the confusion of her parents. “But—”
Joy preempts my concern. “I always have him drop me off at the wrong house a couple doors down. It’s worked out so far.”
“Damn,” I say. “Poor Wu.”
“You mean poor Wu if he ever met my parents,” she says, and slams the door. She calls through the glass: “Go do you.”
“You too.”
And I’m off again.
Alone in the car, I take a deep breath, hold it for a second, and feel a calm silence seep into my mind. The handoff is complete; all that’s left to do is get Brit and enjoy the evening.
I let myself sink into the cracked leather seat. I roll down all the windows. I dangle an arm to catch scoops of dewy air outside, and my hand becomes the rudder of a boat cutting through a perfect sheet of water.
Brit’s house looks different during the day. There are jewel-colored succulents dotting a gravel yard like little sculptures; didn’t notice those the night of our calculus assignment. There is a mermaid carved from driftwood hanging over the front door. It looks historical and beloved. And the door itself, painted red—it looked brown that other night—has a small silver knocker the shape of a dog’s butt.
&
nbsp; I can’t help but compare it with my house: a low-snouted cookie-cutter ranch house with a blank green lawn in front, all practical. My parents work too much to carve mermaids for the threshold. But they must be working toward that kind of stuff, right? Toward that time in life when the hustle eases up, the body relaxes, and the mind begins to contemplate the ideal door knocker.
Otherwise what is the point?
The dog butt jiggles. The door opens to reveal Brit.
“Dog butt,” I say, pointing.
“You like that, huh,” says Brit.
She’s changed clothes too, and now wears a tank top with a battleship bearing a bar code on its hull, with the caption LET’S SCANDINAVIAN.
“I love that shirt so hard,” I say.
She draws a hand down my chest to examine my shirt and says, “I love yours, too.”
Then something occurs to her. “I forgot my sweater. The movies are always so freezing. Come in and say hi.”
She runs upstairs and suddenly I’m in her house again, alone for the moment. I scan in all the details I can: a bouquet of old blueprints rolled up in a tall vintage milk can, a framed French movie poster the size of a bedsheet, a photo of Brit when she was little, tumbling around with her parents in a colorful ball pit. Everything in the room holds intent and emotion and significance.
I think again how different things are in my house. Mom collects chicken-shaped ceramics for no real reason, the cheaper the better. Dad likes souvenir hooks. Any kind of hook from anywhere, the cheaper the better: Hermosa Beach, Los Angeles Airport, Scotty’s Castle.
My parents’ house feels like it’s constantly on the way toward something. Brit’s parents’ house feels like it arrived there a while ago.
“We meet again,” says a voice, and it’s Brit’s dad, approaching in a gray hoodie.
“Hey,” I say.
And with that, he gives me a hug. “I had a feeling about you, buddy. You want a beer?”
“Uh,” I say. “I’m eighteen?”
“Ah, right. How about some weed, then?” He hugs himself and laughs. “Just kidding.”
“Good to see you again, Frank,” croons a voice, and it’s Brit’s mom, also in a gray hoodie. Brit appears behind her, holding a thin sweater.
I regard the four of us, parents in matching hoodies, kids in matching novelty shirts, and want to giggle at the cuteness of it all. A moment passes through the room like a warm updraft in a night vale.
“We should get going,” says Brit.
“Don’t want to miss the previews,” I say.
“I was just going to say that,” says Brit, quietly impressed, and gives me a tilted smile.
“Before you go,” says Brit’s dad, “I wanted to give you something. Brit says you’re into found audio assemblage.”
The words found audio assemblage ping-pong around in my mind. So there’s a phrase for it. And Brit’s dad knows it. An incredible feeling pricks my skin, like when your name is called over the loudspeaker at an awards assembly and everyone looks at you.
Brit’s dad hands me a small round tin. “When Brit’s mom and I were still just courting back in Brooklyn, I had this hobby of recording subway sounds. You might dig it.”
“Whoa,” I say, accepting the tin. “Are you sure?”
“See what it inspires,” he says, and gives Brit a wink.
Brit does not eyeroll or sigh or do any of the teenagery things teenagers are supposed to do. She holds her gaze upon me, like she’s sure I’ll do something great with this small old tin. And indeed her look makes me want to do something great.
* * *
• • •
The best part of Old New Loves isn’t the movie itself—although it’s great, a perfect blend of rom and com, two of my favorite things in the world—but the part before the movie where Brit and I are in line waiting to get snacks. In line, among the other couples young and old, boys with girls holding their thin sweaters and men with women holding their thin sweaters, plus the occasional boy with boy or girl with girl also holding their respective thin sweaters.
I feel like I’ve joined a club. A club of couples.
“Can we get extra jalapeños for the nachos?” says Brit to the cashier.
“I was just going to say that,” I say, drunk with wonder.
We give the previews our full attention and whispered critique, because it turns out we’re both like that. We give the movie our full attention, too. By the end a single hot tear is shining down my cheek, and Brit wipes her own eyes before wiping mine.
We save our kissing for the end credits. I can taste pepper and cheese and she can too, because we both get the urge to wash our mouths out with soda before trying again.
“Much better,” I say.
A short drive away there’s a dumb little cafe over in Crescent Beach, the kind of place with oars and license plates on the walls and old music and older patrons. There’s no reason to ever go to a cafe like this, really. I mean: it’s even called Scudders.
Except now with me and Brit sitting side by side in a booth with cups of cocoa, it’s the perfect place to be.
“I love Scudders,” I say. I take out my Tascam and record a length of ambient audio—all soft clinks and murmurs and long chair scrapes sounding like whalesong—then put it away.
“It’s beautiful in its own way,” says Brit, examining a cluster of glass floats. “Not kitschy, though. I hate kitsch. Kitsch is not seeing something for what it is, but what you think it should be.”
“It’s like making fun of someone else’s taste.”
“It’s so mean,” says Brit.
I think about Mom’s chickens and Dad’s hooks. Are they kitsch? Am I mean about them?
I realize I kind of am. It makes me wonder if chickens and souvenir hooks were big in Korea in the eighties.
“It really is mean,” I say, vowing to be better from now on. There’s a glass clock on the wall filled with bubbling amber liquid and shaped like a beer mug. It must be fifty years old. “See, that’s not kitsch right there. That’s beautiful.”
“Are you okay for time, by the way?” says Brit.
“I’m good,” I say. “We have tons of time.”
“Yesss,” says Brit like a kid.
We have tons of time because I now have a special arrangement with Joy, I think. But Brit turns to face me and her hair dips into her cocoa, banishing the thought from my mind as I rush to push her mug aside.
“Your hair got in your drink,” I say.
She sticks the wet lock in my face. “Taste it,” she says.
“Gah,” I say. But I do.
“You’re crazy, Frank Li,” says Brit.
We both get serious for a moment. In this particular moment, right here. Sucking cocoa from a girl’s hair is weird. Who does this sort of thing? And who lets them? But Brit is letting me. She wants me to.
I am extremely proud to be the only person who has ever sucked Brit Means’s hair.
We order more cocoa, and then a plate of fries. We don’t look at our phones once. I know there’s at least an hour before Return to Base, which is the time Joy and I have agreed to each return home just in case we need to keep our timelines straight. Eventually the waitstaff begin upending chairs. On the drive home we both scoop the air with our hands sticking out either side of the car like wings.
“Angle your hands just right for liftoff,” I say.
“I’m trying,” says Brit, laughing this far-off laugh that sounds a little like crying.
“Liftoff, liftoff,” I shout.
At the red door, which I now clearly see as red and not brown, we kiss one last time before the silver dog butt. I dance down her steps and do not fall or falter once.
I drive home and park outside to keep the garage door rattle from waking everyone. I slip off my shoes and align them perfectly wi
th Mom-n-Dad’s in the glossy brown tiled entranceway.
When I get to my bedroom, someone has left my desk lamp on to help me see in the dark, and my bed is perfectly made. I flop onto it and begin slipping into sleep when I remember to send one quick message.
Confirming, back at base now.
Me too, back at base and in bed, says Joy.
How did it go?
Really great, says Joy. I felt like Cinderella liberated past curfew.
And you didn’t turn into a pumpkin.
Ha! How was B?
Gangbusters, I say. A perfect night.
Well highfive then
Highfive indeed.
And Joy sends me an animated picture of two soccer players attempting a high five, failing, and smacking each other in the face simultaneously.
“Good night, Joy,” I say, before falling into a clear, deep sleep.
chapter 11
gem swapping
At The Store the next day I am useless. I forget to bag things, I give out the wrong change, I stare right past customers’ eyes.
“You terrible,” says Dad, laughing with glee. “Right now you in so-called state of perpetual distraction.”
But he’s not mad or anything. He just laughs and laughs, because he thinks I’m dating Joy Song.
Brit and I text for a bit later that night, but not as much as you’d think. It’s like we both want to save it up for Monday when we see each other again at school. So I bid her good night, retrieve Brit’s dad’s gift—the small round tin—and open it to reveal a small spool of old audiotape. I carefully mount it onto an old portable Sony reel-to-reel from my collection of audio equipment. I begin digitizing my favorite clips. At one point, I hear Brit’s mom’s voice amid the screeching din of the subway car.
Look at those two, she says.
Get yourselves a room, says another male voice. Brit’s dad.
Are we like that? she says.
Well, I sure as hell hope so, he says.
They sound a little like me and Brit. I wonder: what did Mom-n-Dad sound like when they were courting, as Brit’s dad put it? There’s no recording; even if there were, it’d all be in Korean. Which I guess could get translated. But would it still feel the same?
